A comparative evaluation framework with quantification for UAV simulation platforms

The significance of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) is quite high in precision agriculture, disaster response, surveillance system, logistic etc. However, there is a need for a reliable simulation platform for studying UAV as there are safety constraints, environmental uncertainty, and increased cost for real-world testing. The current state of UAV simulators is witnessing lack of benchmarks, minimal physics fidelity, integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), restricted interoperability etc.  Therefore, this study chooses to investigate some prominent UAV simulation tools viz. MATLAB UAV Toolbox, Gazebo, AirSim, X-Plane, FlightGear, JMAVSim, and OpenUAV adopting a multi-stage framework of evaluation. The quantitative outcome of the study finds that efficient support of hardware-in-the loop is facilitated by MATLAB UAV Tools and higher scalability towards swarm operation is supported by OpenUAV.